Keilim 15:6 - 16:1

נבלי השירה – harps that they sing with them. The language of lyre and harp (i.e., secular music).

טמאין – that the lyres and harps are profane and are perforated to the side of the strings in order to produce the sound of the melody. And it is the manner of those of play to leave within them the money that they collect from people who come to listen. And it is carried both full and empty.

נבלי בני לוי – who play on the platform [of the Temple].

טהורין – they are not made to place money in them, and they are not made to receive anything.

כל המשקין טמאין – each one of the seven liquids which are water, wine, oil, honey, milk, blood [and] dew, are susceptible to receive ritual defilement, and make fit the seeds to receive ritual defilement.

ומשקה בית מטבחיא – the water and the blood that are in the slaughterhouse that is in the Temple courtyard.

כל הספרים מטמאין את הידים – because at the outset, they would hide the food of the heave-offering with the Torah scrolls, for they said: “this is holy, and that is holy,” since they saw that these Scrolls came to a loss, that the mice that would be found near the foods would cause loss to them, they (i.e., the Sages) decreed that all Scrolls of all Holy Writings defile the heave-offering through their contact, they decreed further that the hands that touch the Scrolls would be second-level of ritual defilement and would invalidate the heave-offering [for the Kohanim].

מספר העזרה – The Torah scroll that the High Priest reads from in the Women’s Court on Yom Kippur, for one should not be concerned lest they place food-stuffs of heave-offering near it, because of his fear and its importance.

מרכוף (name of a musical instrument made stationary) – a wooden horse that the jesters/scoffers make to ride upon to make fun of.

הבטנון (a sort of bagpipe, cittern fastened around the body; workingman’s pinafore, lute) – a large musical instrument, that the player rests on his stomach. And they call it TZITRA in the foreign language.

הנקטמון – a kind of musical instrument made in the form of a leg of wood that a person makes whose leg was cut/severed.

הארוס (drum) – made like a kind of sieve whose walls are round and they stretch thin leather over its mouth and strike it with a mallet and it produces a clear sound. TAMBOROV in the foreign tongue (i.e., tambourine).

טמא מושב – if a person with gonorrhea or a woman with a flux, a menstruating woman or a woman who gave birth to a child sat upon it, it becomes a primary form of Levitical impurity to ritually defile people [and] to ritually defile clothing. For it is a vessel that is special for sitting.

שהאלית – that is to say those [women] who sing dirges and howl sit upon it, for they would regularly eulogize and sing dirges through the melody of that instrument. And such is the custom today in the countries of the Ishmaelites.

אלית (the female wailer) – it is the language of (Joel 1:8): “Lament – like a maiden girt with sackcloth [for the husband of her youth!]"אלי כבתולה חגרת-שק [על-בעל נעוריה]". But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Yehuda.

מצודת החולדה טמאה – because it has upon it the form of a vessel, which is not the case regarding the trap of the mouse.

כל כלי עץ. שלחן הכפול – it is made by links/segment of earth cut out in digging a pit and piled up on its border or sections, and after they remove it, they fold the segments or sections one top of the other, and each segment is a vessel on its own.

תמחוי המזנון (a plate with many partitions – each of which, if separated, may be a receptacle) – a very large dish and within it are small dishes, and they place on each of the smaller dishes a course of cooked food. And because there is within it many different kinds, it is called תמחוי המזנון/a plate with many partitions. And in Aramaic translation it is called למינו לזנוהי.

אפיפורין (saddle cloth – protuberance/shape of the human buttock) – the seat of limbs.

המגס (tray, plate, dish) – the Aramaic translation of קערה מגיסתא/a dish from a tray.

קוד הבבלי (wooden Babylonian bowl – fragments of which may be used as a receptacle) – like a kind of wooden dish. And it is the language of the Sages, as it is explained, of a מקדה בזויה/fragment of a degraded vessel used for carrying fire. And all of these vessels, even though they were divided, remained in each section of them the form of a vessel. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Yehuda.

משישופם בעור הדג (from when he rubs them with fish skin) – to remove the chips that are in them. For prior to this, they are not appropriate for the work, that they wound the skin. But if they are not lacking anything other than the rubbing of glistening and scouring/washing, we hold [see Tractate Hullin 25a]: “unfinished wood vessels that is to be adorned with designs and polished are ritually impure.”

גמר שלא לשוף – he determined in his heart to use them even though he will not polish/rub them any further.

שלשה בתים – when they make a partition by means of net-work/like lattices to the bed with ropes, between each rope it is called a בית/row. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Meir.